Penna Dexter

Six years ago, in the thick of COVID, regents at the University of California voted that applicants to their prestigious school system would no longer be required to submit SAT or ACT scores.

Regent Jay Sures told reporters, “I believe the test is racist.” 

One woke argument was that test questions contain cultural biases that make it harder for racial and ethnic minorities or low-income applicants to do well.

But The Wall Street Journal’s Jason Riley, who is black, pointed out that “questions that depend on exposure to white privilege are rare, not typical.” He said scrapping standardized tests is “unfortunate because low-income minorities have more to lose than gain from the end of standardized testing.”

The SAT was designed to measure potential to succeed in college. This includes identifying students with the aptitude, but not necessarily the educational opportunities to attain good high school grades.  

Still, the 2020 UC rollbacks on ACT/SAT scores were adopted by over 90 percent of four-year universities. Now, top schools like Yale and Dartmouth are reversing course. Two years after suspending the testing requirement, MIT restored it. 

And 1200 members of the UC faculty— many of whom teach in STEM programs — have signed a letter to the Board of Regents asking that the UC system bring back the SAT/ACT requirement for admission. Among the signers were seven of nine math department chairs. 

The letter states “We now observe preparation gaps so severe that instructors must reteach middle-school mathematics while simultaneously teaching the material students need for sciences, engineering, economics, and other quantitatively demanding fields.”

A November report compiled at UC San Diego revealed about 900 freshmen unable to do high school-level math — up from just 30 in 2020. Seventy percent of those students struggled even with middle-school math. 

Due to grade inflation, high school transcripts alone are insufficient. It’s good the Academy is rethinking the SAT.